Fr. Rick Spicer

This parable is not about wedding customs or about staying awake at night. The bottom line is being prepared to meet Christ. How often do we find ourselves poorly prepared like the foolish virgins? Perhaps there are a few college alumni present who can relate to this story of a foolish freshman.

The night before his first final exam, this student, who believed that he always worked best under pressure, finally got out his books and notes at 10:00 and began to study. He was doing well—reviewing his notes and highlighting certain passages in his textbooks. Around 2:00 in the morning, he fell asleep at his desk. When he woke up, he was stunned to discover he was an hour late for class.

Grabbing his pen, he ran to class. There he desperately explained to his professor what had happened. As one would expect, the teacher wasn’t sympathetic and just said, “Well, do what you can with the time you have.” Needless to say, when the grades were posted, he didn’t pass.

Highlighting on the custom of his time, Jesus tells the story of ten virgins, five of whom he called foolish for not being prepared. Unlike those who were wise, they did not have sufficient oil for their lamps to last through the night. Caught short-handed, they had to fetch more oil elsewhere and while they were gone, the bridegroom arrived.

In the early years of the Church, many believed that Jesus, as the bridegroom, would soon return in majestic glory. The end times were near. By the time Paul wrote his letter to the Thessalonians, many early Christians had died and hope of Jesus’ return in glory was beginning to fade.

Realizing that the return of Christ was not eminent prompted Matthew to write his gospel for future generations. He included the parable of the ten virgins to caution his readers that like the bridegroom, Jesus was delayed in coming. We do not know when Christ will return in majestic glory but we must be prepared when the moment arrives.

It may seem strange to you that the wise virgins refused to share what oil they had with their foolish counterparts. After all, that sounds selfish, but Jesus is speaking of something that couldn’t be shared. If we see the “oil” as our good deeds and acts of love, that explains why the wise virgins couldn’t share what they had with the foolish virgins. The oil we use to light our lamps comes from our good deeds and acts of love, from being good stewards.

Such a life asks us to share our gifts of time, talent and treasure. Yes, the parish benefits from these gifts, but more importantly, we are concerned about the person you are becoming. The parish ultimately exists for the sake of your eternal salvation and we want you to be prepared for the day you take your last breath by living this life well.

Like the wise virgins, we have “oil” in our lamps. If we practice stewardship, we will have the generous, humble and open hearts, which the Lord requires of us. But if we keep putting off what really matters, Jesus may one day say to us, “I do not know you.” As the foolish virgins and freshman learned too late, each person has the responsibility to be prepared, for someday there will be no second chance.

When we strive to live unselfishly and care about the needs and interests of others as well as our own, our chances of being a member of the heavenly family will be granted. If we are vigilant, thus mindful of our responsibility before God to be good stewards of what we have, we will grow in kindness and compassion. That is truly being prepared.

Hanging on the wall near our baptismal font is a tapestry depicting Jesus being baptized. The original tapestry is one of 25 lining the walls of the Cathedral in Los Angeles, woven in Belgium, which portray 135 wonderfully diverse saints. These holy people, black, white, brown, male, female, young and old, appear in all their beautiful humanity, representing every era of our Christian history. Many of the figures are familiar but some are anonymous. Silently they grace the walls of this majestic cathedral. Their diversity reminds us that we are all called to holiness and sainthood.

The author of Revelation tells us that 144,000 from every tribe of Israel were marked with the seal along with a great multitude that could not be counted. That number sounds huge but it isn’t to be taken literally. The author was using math. Twelve, the number of tribes, representing the entire Jewish people, was squared then multiplied by 1,000. Recall how God told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. Added to that total was a vast number from every race, people and tongue.

These people stood before the throne of God wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out, “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.”

Who are these souls wearing white robes, and where did they come from? They were ordinary folks like you and me. As John tells us, they are children of God. They have made it to heaven, perhaps with a stop in purgatory, in spite of their many trials and tribulations and their moments of sinfulness because they heeded the advice of the good shepherd, following his blueprint to salvation that is outlined for us in the beatitudes. In this eloquent passage, Jesus suggests what our dispositions should be if we seek to spend eternity with him and the saints. The beatitudes characterize a person who trusts in God for everything.

Essentially, Jesus calls us away from being self-centered to being God centered. He describes his followers’ blessed way of life in eight ways. They are the ones who have been poor in spirit, have mourned without comfort, have longed for their inheritance with meekness, have hungered and thirsted for justice, have been merciful and clean of heart, have tried to build peace and has suffered for all these choices. Their striving to live this way in imitation of Jesus has not always been perfect or easy. Being human, they have stumbled and erred but have repeatedly asked forgiveness and tried again. They are the ones whom others may never have thought of as being saintly but who placed their trust in God, knowing that only by God’s grace can we be washed clean and clothed in radiance.

The last of the beatitudes, articulated in two different ways, reminds Christians that Jesus is their model and that the more we imitate him, the more we can expect to share his sufferings, his sorrows and his joys. Obviously, the attitudes Jesus describes here spring from a deep, loving relationship with God. That is what every saint holds in common.

Jesus called them blessed because they have grasped his understanding of life. Such an attitude is incompatible with lording it over others, culminating instead in gratitude.

When the beatitudes reflect our mindset, we weep over any society that allows children to be exploited by drugs, sex and crass commercialism.  We mourn over a society that allows a million and a half abortions per year.  We mourn over a society that takes children away from their parents and holds them in cages. We seek to respect the dignity of all human life from conception to natural death.

Today’s feast assures us of a place someday within the great heavenly chorus when we accept the grace of being sealed as God’s own. That happened at our baptism. Then choosing to live each day in accord with that grace.

We belong to an immense family, a great cloud of witnesses, who constantly surround us, praying for us and with us, urging us onward toward our final reunion with God and them.

What we can note about the saints, whether they are familiar to us or the ones who live in our neighborhoods is that they come in every shape, size, color, and age. They are set apart, not by their intelligence, talent, education, work, mother tongue, culture, but by the fact that like Jesus and Mary, they have accepted their life as a vocation to holiness, an opportunity to receive and spread God’s limitless love. Seeking to be holy should be every Christian’s goal in life.

Will we be numbered among the saints someday? Do we have the courage to proclaim God’s love with our lives? Hopefully, the answer is a resounding yes. That is why we pray today on the Solemnity of All Saints. We pray for the courage to follow the Lord.  We pray for the courage to put God first in our lives.  May the Lord help us to stand for him and with him all the days of our lives. 

We just heard a well-known line used by some who advocate a separation of church and state. I doubt that was what Jesus or Matthew intended since such a notion was unheard of back then. Rather, Matthew depicted Jesus as being thought provoking and clever, teaching his critics that everyone holds a dual citizenship. Our birth makes us citizens of an earthly nation for now; our baptism makes us citizens of the heavenly kingdom for eternity. Jesus is telling us that we need to live out both citizenships responsibly.

The degree of separation between church and state varied throughout history. Some argue that the Church is no place to discuss politics but as you can see, even Jesus did that. The first amendment simply states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The intent is to prevent Congress from imposing a certain faith on its citizens, which King Henry VIII had done in England. The Church has authority in political matters when politics invades its turf, namely upholding the dignity and meaning of human life, all human life from conception to natural death.

The founders of our country were convinced that the American experiment could not succeed without the benefit of religious belief. They considered religion to be the backbone of society and the strength of its citizens. They knew religion was good for the country. And how could it be otherwise? Politics is the social organization of a culture, the structure of a country’s values, the daily operations of its beliefs. But religion is the depth dimension of a culture that gives everything else it’s meaning.

Politics and religion are different aspects of people’s lives, but they are intimately connected because they deal with how people relate to one another, and religion highlights our relationship with God, which serves as the foundation of all other relationships in our lives.

When people argue that church and state should be separate, that is akin to making God subject to our laws, our politics, and our ideas. But think back to our first reading from Isaiah. There we heard God say, “I am the Lord, there is no other.” The truth of God’s sovereignty is echoed in many of our country’s founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

The Church doesn’t seek to run our country or the world by means of political power. Nonetheless, she needs to be actively engaged in seeking the good of others. Her power is vested in Christ the King. Our loyalty to him is for eternity, while our loyalty to our country is only for this lifetime.

In a democratic society such as ours, where all citizens can participate directly in the political process, we have certain responsibilities, such as paying taxes and voting. We have to make a decent effort to stay informed about important political and cultural issues so that we can vote responsibly and intelligently. That isn’t always easy since not all issues are on the same level.

We are only weeks away from a national election that many concede has great consequences in these unusual days of pandemic and rancor. In the past week, ballots were mailed to every registered voter; hopefully every voter will take time to study the issues, consider the strengths and shortcoming of the candidates, then complete and sign their ballot.

Unfortunately, there are voters who won’t bother to vote, convinced that their vote won’t make much difference. Let me share with you the value of a single vote.

Because of one vote in 1921, Adolf Hitler became leader of the Nazi Party in Germany. That one vote ultimately cost the lives of six million Jews in the worst holocaust in history. If just one more person had voted for the other candidate, might we have been spared all the pain and deaths of WWII? Yes, one vote can literally change history.

Contrary to what some people assume, the Church is not telling us whom to vote for. The Church does not endorse candidates for public office. Rather, the Church respects your right and duty to study the issues and to make an informed, conscience-driven decision about whom to vote for. Alas, neither major party reflects or supports all that the Church teaches regarding the sanctity of human life and rare is the candidate that does so.

For those who are using abortion as a litmus test, Pope Francis cautions that a conscientious Catholic cannot be a single-issue voter. Being pro-life means far more than opposing abortion. To be pro-life means to care about the life of the unborn, the newly born, the sick, the elderly, the poor, the homeless, the refugee, the inmate on death row, and every other human being. To be pro-life also means to be committed to uprooting the terrible scourge of racism, which continues to tear our nation apart.

If we want to know how to help our nation heal, how to treat one another, or even how to vote, we need only ponder the awesome gospel of Jesus Christ, which provides us with the very basis of Catholic moral and social teaching. Its broad embrace should influence how every Christian exercises the sacred duty of voting responsibly. May Jesus Christ and his Gospel inspire and challenge each of us as we prepare to cast our vote in this and every election.

Parables are timeless tools Jesus used to get his message across. Full of violence, the remarkable instructive parable in this gospel is timely. Alas, violence colors the world we live in. Nations, peoples, individuals, even kids, routinely hurt, maim, and kill. In this graphic manner, Jesus cautions that the kingdom of God will be taken away from those who have no respect for the Son of God and given to those who will produce “fruit.”

Historically, our world has often been divided between “us” and “them.” In the parable, we had the tenants and the servants. Now “us and them” could be described as blacks and whites, Muslims and Jews, gays and straights, the haves and have-nots, to name but a few. One doesn’t have to go far to find division. Even within our minds, we have a tug of war going on. Our “tenants” are our beliefs, habits, and attitudes that dupe us into rejecting the call of the servants, our modern day prophets, who urge us to respect the Son of God and his message to love God and one another. The tenants’ final act of defiance in killing the son alludes to our personal rejection of Christ, which happens whenever we choose not to respect life from conception to natural death.

When we are influenced more by the secularism of our culture than the teachings of our Church, we choose not to see certain acts that others or we commit as being immoral or wrong. Instead, we rationalize that certain sinful acts and values are harmless, when in fact, they are not.

Every sin causes harm and hurt.  History is full of examples where we have chosen not to respect life. Genocidal slaughter based on ethnic or religious differences have devastated many societies and nations, including ours. But the destruction doesn’t end there. We must not ignore the cold-blooded killings of gang wars, terminally ill patients committing suicide with the help of doctors, prisoners who have been tortured or executed, fetuses destroyed by abortion or infanticide, or addictive behaviors like pornography that undermine the dignity of the human person.

Our culture considers these values acceptable. Many who find them offensive and immoral choose to remain silent on the matter or feel that “the choice is a person’s right.”  There is a certain banality about evil. Evil often takes the form of simple conformity to what everyone is doing, and to what our leaders say is right. Such silent assent doesn’t make the evil disappear as one German ruefully observed decades ago, “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

The immorality, the violence and the legitimized killings are so commonplace that they may seem beyond our control. So, we reason, as did many Germans during the reign of Adolf Hitler, we have neither the power nor the responsibility to change things. Yet Edmund Burke, an English philosopher, once noted that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

Pope Benedict XVI observed the divisive nature of culture when he visited our country. “The subtle influence of secularism can color the way people allow their faith to influence their behavior. Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?”

The obvious answer is no if we want to bring about the kingdom of God in our midst. Saint Pope John Paul II cautioned, “For many people the difference between good and evil is determined by the opinion of the majority…” He added, “The choice in favor of life is not a private option but a basic demand of a just and moral society.” To respect life, there must be a reawakening in our hearts to really know and live the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Such an intimate understanding emerges through daily prayer, study and attentive reflection of the Gospel.  

One of the functions of religion is to make us pay attention to the ultimate issues, the deeper questions, to keep us from being complacent, sometimes to shake us out of our comfortable habits and perspectives, just as Jesus often did with parables.

Like the tenants in today’s parable, we seek to eliminate and destroy that which threatens our economic and physical security, our sense of personal safety, our self-centered, narrow view of the world with which we have grown comfortable. Jesus Christ, our Messiah, comes with a new, transforming vision for our “vineyard,” a vision of love rather than greed, of peace rather than hostility, of forgiveness rather than vengeance.

Jesus told us, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”  Any contractor knows that a building without a cornerstone will eventually collapse. Raising his son from the dead, God offers us Jesus as the cornerstone of our faith. If this is what we profess, then he must supplant the false beliefs, habits, and attitudes, which the wicked “tenants” of our secular culture promote.  When we know Jesus and his message, his voice stands out from the rest of the world. May we have the courage and wisdom to dare to “look into the eyes” of Christ, welcoming him into our vineyard, aware that he calls us to a demanding change of heart, determined to bear “fruits” of love by what we say and do.